Appointments

Tante Marieke and Oom Martin are back in The Netherlands, and they are greatly missed already. They spent the last few days of their vacation here with us. Upon their return from their climbing adventure at Joshua tree, Loki greeted his Auntie with a huge grin. This little guy knows how to charm Tante Marieke into getting him lots of gifts. At least this is the effect his sweetness seems to have on her.

Loki has gained weight and we are very thrilled about that. On Friday he weighed 9 pounds and 1.5 ounce (4.1 kg). The long feeding sessions are starting to pay off. We hope to soon see a change in how rapidly he is able to take in his milk. Spending approximately 12 hours a day just on getting the little guy to drink is pretty exhausting and is starting to show it's wear and tear on our energy. Especially since Mom's milk supply is going down, everybody would benefit from Lokers drinking from the breast.

On another note, we see Loki reach new developmental milestones regularly. He plays with his tongue in a way we have not seen before. In addition, when Dad holds Loki in prone position (tummy) on his hands to "fly around the room," Loki is able to hold his head in midline quite often, rather than dropping it down to inspect the floors. Finally, little Mister Sky bears some weight on his legs when held in a standing position. He sometimes even bounces on his legs while expressing his excitement.

The surgery is rescheduled back to the first of April. We are happy to have his hernia fixed, and somewhat hopeful that this will help him feel less uncomfortable.

In the mean while Loki and Mom just move from appointment to appointment. Just this month we have had 17 doctors', nurses' and other specialists' visits. This comes down to a little more than one meeting every other day. Most of those are in the home fortunately, although the ones outside give a nice break during Mom and Loki's long, long hours inside the house. One can imagine though, that with the long feeding sessions, there is not much else Mom and Loki do but feed and visit with specialists. Thus the unanswered phone and email messages, since Loki does not like to eat while too much talking is going on.

Photos will follow soon.